Baidu and BlackBerry collaborated on developing self-driving vehicle

Baidu Inc. and BlackBerry Ltd collaborated on developing autonomous cars. The two companies on Wednesday signed a partnership to work together in the development of self-driving vehicle technology that raised BlackBerry shares in Toronto up 8 percent as the highest in four years.

The automotive industry has become one of the fastest growing technology market segments where BlackBerry has developed QNX Hypervisor 2.0 software to run complex computer systems on vehicles. Baidu will use the software for the open source platform of the Project Apollo.

"The integration of BlackBerry QNX OS and Apollo platforms allows automakers to bring prototype vehicles into mass production," said Li Zhenyu, general manager of Baidu's intelligent driving division.

BlackBerry has signed various transactions for next-generation automotive systems with Qualcomm Inc., Denso and Aptiv Plc. BlackBerry and Baidu will also incorporate Baidu smartphone integration software for connected cars and AI systems on BlackBerry QNX Platform.